Shops in Milwaukee area are offering more straight-razor shaves, and men are ditching the disposable at home, too

The growth has been subtle as the emergence of late-afternoon stubble on a man's cheek.

But even as Schick and Gillette have taken us from one blade all the way to five and who knows how many more, interest in traditional shaving is putting a new face on what many have long regarded as a chore.

Stag Barbershop, a Bay View spot with a caribou head mounted on the wall and a cowhide rug on the floor, is doing 20 to 30 straight-razor shaves a week.

Groom, in the Third Ward, has seen shaves more than double in just two years.

At Mayfair mall, the Art of Shaving store that opened in mid-2012 joined a growing chain where men can buy $320 razors and $175 brushes. There were 36 Art of Shaving outlets when Procter & Gamble Co. bought the business in June 2009. Today: 131.

Old-line manufacturers such as Germany's Dovo, meanwhile, are straining to meet demand for straight razors.

The art of making the bad boys of shaving "almost sank into oblivion," Anne Rothstein, an export sales representative with Dovo, said in an email. Now, she said, the firm produces 3,000 a month. The backlog on new orders is three years.

"I definitely think it's cool, and it's old-school," Stag owner Jess Stern said of the rebound of traditional shaving. "And a lot of the old-school trends are back."

A boom at Groom

In 2011, the "barbettes" at Groom (they're all women) unsheathed their straight razors for 455 shaves. Last year they did 993.

"I've been shaving professionally for over 10 years now," said Patti Davenport, Groom's director of shaving and author of a text on the subject. "And I've seen it pick up a lot."

Recently, Davenport, whose fingers are tattooed with Viking runes (they symbolize joy, partnership and journey) applied her skills on Jim Bingenheimer, a 37-year-old maintenance man from West Milwaukee whose girlfriend, Lisa Thompson, was popping for a beard trim and a shave.

"He replaced a water heater for me on a Sunday night," Thompson said. "So kind of 'Thank you' for doing plumbing."

After about 30 minutes in the hands of Davenport and her practiced routine — beard-softening pre-shave product, shave oil, a multistroke pass with the straight razor, more oil, a hot towel, another pass with the straight razor, a second hot towel, a splash of lotion and, finally, a bracing cool-towel finish — Bingenheimer was doing the thanking.

"It's awesome," he said, seeing his face transformed from a somewhat scraggly state to one with a neat goatee and skin that Thompson pronounced as smooth as the proverbial baby's behind.

"I can't believe how soft his beard is," she said. "It's usually like little wires poking, and it's way soft now. And, he looks good."

Honing her craft

Davenport got her straight-razor start in Arizona, where a couple of 70-something members of the state barbering board "just took me under their wing," she said.

Stern began honing her craft at a salon, supplemented it with online research, then dug into old textbooks. "And learned what's called the 14-stroke shave, which is the original shaving method," she said.

Stern's shop also has hosted Herro, who in the three-dimensional world is a manager in the telecommunications office of Texas A&M University but on YouTube is home-shaving guru "mantic59."

Herro, who left Wisconsin for Texas back in the '80s, acknowledged that 10 minutes might be viewed as a long stretch in front of the bathroom mirror.

"For some people it is," he said. "I justify that by the additional experience it gives me — the warm, fragrant lather, the concentration of the shave — it almost makes it like meditation. And really, the results for a lot of people justify the additional time."

Davenport believes an increasing number of men feel much the same.

"Guys are paying more attention to their skin care needs, and picking up either a safety razor or a straight razor to have a little bit more of a ritual in the morning is becoming a lot more common," she said.

Enter the big boys

Which is why Procter & Gamble bought The Art of Shaving five years ago and has been busily expanding it since. The upscale chain remains a dust speck next to P&G's Gillette brand, which gives the Cincinnati company 70% of the worldwide razor and blade market. But it doesn't hurt to hedge your bets.

For some men, collecting shaving gear becomes a hobby. Maybe an obsession. They're the ones who spend lots of time on websites such as Badger & Blade.

Cumulatively, they've posted 5.7 million comments on the site's forum, though maybe a fourth of those aren't shaving-related. The most enthusiastic participants post photos of their gear in the "shave of the day" section.

"They get very excited about what new cream they're going to use," website founder Joel Ferman said. "Some of these guys have 50, 60, a hundred shaving creams or soaps. ... There are guys who have one straight razor which is two or three thousand dollars."

Ferman, an IT professional in California, said that when he started Badger & Blade in 2005, a bottom-of-the line straight razor from French manufacturer Thiers Issard sold for about $50. Today, even that basic blade goes for $170, he said.

"They can't make enough," Ferman said. "Demand far exceeds supply."

That situation prompted online merchant Classic Shaving to recruit a crew of blade-makers in northern Michigan. From home workshops, they're now turning out straight razors that Classic Shaving sells under the Hart Steel name.

"When I first heard of it, and when a lot of people first hear of it, the buggy whip comes into mind," bladesmith Bruce Gregory, a former computer programmer, said of the trend. "But it's seriously growing. I think it's a combination of nostalgia, old-timey stuff and the environmental aspect of it.

"People feel better about maybe buying a $300 razor that's going to last them basically forever rather than buying $300 worth of plastic and tiny little metal blades over however many years that would take — not very many from what I've seen."

Not always so pricey

Beyond the luxury of a hot-towel shave from Davenport ($35, plus tip) or the feel of Gregory's 6/8-inch Damascus "Shorty" razor ($595), the traditional-shaving trend includes a cost-conscious element.

Take Herro. His main shaving tools are a Merkur Progress safety razor that sells for about $60 to $70, and a $40 badger-bristle brush. A little shaving cream goes a long way. Blades cost him less than 20 cents each.

"And I get a closer, smoother shave than I get with a cartridge," he said.

It's been decades since Herro lived in Wisconsin, but shaving reconnected him with his roots here.

About three years ago, OnMilwaukee.com publisher Andy Tarnoff was standing in a Target store, staring at multiblade razor cartridges and thinking there must be a better way. He pulled out his phone and did a quick search: "cheaper shaving." Up popped one of Herro's videos.

Tarnoff watched, became a convert to old-school shaving, wrote about it, and ended up connecting with Herro. The relationship blossomed, and Tarnoff — who knows something about digital publishing — suggested that the very basic shaving blog Herro had at the time could be shaped into a much more substantial Internet presence.

From those conversations sprang a partnership and a new website, Sharpologist.com. It embeds Herro's homey videos in a slick, polished package stuffed with other features — things like a review of Occams shave cream from Australia, links to 30-some shaving forums, or an article on "9 Newbie Wet Shaving Mistakes You Can Avoid."

The site has attracted enough advertising and traffic — about 200,000 page views a month, Tarnoff said — that Herro, who soon will turn 55, is thinking about making it a full-time career. The idea would be to continue a relationship with OnMilwaukee.com and seek additional revenue streams, perhaps selling products or expertise.

All of which has been a bit of a revelation to a next-door-neighbor sort of guy who started making videos after winning a camcorder at a conference he was attending.

"I didn't think there'd be any kind of a market for it," Herro said, "but over the past couple of years, especially, the interest of the general public in shaving has grown quite dramatically."